Greta Gerwig: 'Lady Bird is the person I wish I could have been'

After building an enviable reputation for her acting and co-writing work on a string of low-key indie movies, Greta Gerwig is making an emphatic move into the mainstream with Lady Bird, her debut as writer-director.

The film tells the story of teenager Christine (Saoirse Ronan), who insists on being called by her "given" name of Lady Bird ("It was given to me, by me," as she puts it). In particular, it examines her tempestuous relationship with her mother, Marion, played by Laurie Metcalf - best known to many as Roseanne's sister in the eponymous 1990s sitcom.

Ultimately, it becomes as much about Marion accepting that her daughter is growing up as it is about Lady Bird breaking free of her childhood.

Gerwig says of the relationship: "It’s not like you stop being a mother or you stop being a daughter, but some version of it is ending.

"I felt like that last year of high school is the most vivid. To me it was the moment when all the stakes felt highest for that relationship. They could fight and it could be brutal, but underneath you knew that there was this love."

The film is set in Gerwig’s hometown of Sacramento, but that's where the similarities to her own life end. She describes her teenage years as "the opposite in a way. I was a rule-follower, I was a people-pleaser, I never made anyone call me by a different name, I never dyed my hair bright red.

"I think a lot of what I gave Lady Bird were things that I would think but not say. It was almost like it was the person I wish I could have been, but I didn’t have enough courage to do it - and then even though she’s flawed, and she makes mistakes, she’s a heroine to me."

Gerwig adds that the character of Kyle (Timothée Chalamet) - who Lady Bird has a crush on - is in fact closer to herself than the lead character. She says: "The reason I like Kyle is not because I was cool, or in a band like him - I was neither of those things - but I was like him.

"I gave Timothée all these books to read, and he was like, 'Whose notes are in all of them?' and I was like, 'Oh, those are my notes', and he was like, 'Oh... you agree with all of Kyle’s stuff!'"

On her directing style, she says: "I never direct comedy like it’s comedy. I talked to Saoirse about it and at first she was like, 'I've never been in a straight comedy quite like this'. She was just nervous and I said, 'Don't play it like a comedy, play it like it's utterly serious, and it will be funny'."

Lady Bird is a milestone in Greta Gerwig’s movie career, being both her directorial debut and her first solo writing project, having previously co-written Frances Ha and Mistress America with her partner Noah Baumbach.

But Gerwig is modest in her description of her role in the filmmaking process and shies away for the term auteur, choosing instead to recognise the collaborative nature of her project.

She says: "Auteur theory undercuts how much a film is made by a group of people. And while I'm the person at the helm, I'm also reliant on them interpreting the story their own way. And that's what I love about it."

Gerwig is similarly modest about her original ambitions for the project, admitting that her decision to direct came after she had finished the script. She says: "I thought, 'You’ve gotta try! You’re never going to forgive yourself if you don’t try'. And then I took the plunge, and I was like, 'All right, I've got this script, I'm going to direct it', and I dunno – I'd rather try and fail than never have tried."

So can she make history at the Oscars next month and become only the second woman (after Kathryn Bigelow) to bag the Best Director prize? The critics have certainly heaped enough praise on the film, which famously became the best-reviewed movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes last year, with a '100% fresh' rating. (At the time of writing it's dropped to a still-not-too-shabby 98%.)

But the awards season so far has been a mixed bag. Lady Bird won Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes but Gerwig missed out on a Best Director nomination.

At the Baftas, the screenplay was nominated and Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf were both in the running for acting awards, but ultimately left empty-handed.

Whatever the Oscars outcome, Gerwig has created a movie that is sure to inspire more female filmmakers, and she is rightly proud of that. She says: "I know that when I was growing up, when I started looking at films and seeing that they were directed by women, it meant so much to me.

"By talking about it and being visible, hopefully someone who wants to be a filmmaker listens to me talk and then says, ‘Wait, I could do that!’ Hopefully one day it will not be notable that I’m a woman. But until it’s not notable, I’m happy to talk about it."

Gerwig still finds the success of Lady Bird a surprise, but reckons the reason for it lies in the fact that it connects with people. She adds: “It’s universal - everybody has a family, everybody has a place they’re from.”

Lady Bird is in cinemas nationwide from today.